Update (11/17/2015): I have just finished rereading this book and drafting the dissertation chapter I was planning when I read it the first time, threUpdate (11/17/2015): I have just finished rereading this book and drafting the dissertation chapter I was planning when I read it the first time, three years ago. These days, I'm more interested in how Avellaneda, the Cuban belle of the Spanish court, used the novel to repudiate the acts of violence her compatriots were facing under the colonial government in Cuba. However, I still agree with the words I wrote back in 2012: Guatimozin is indeed "clunky but fascinating."

Original Review (11/2012):In United States circles Gómez de Avellaneda is known mostly for her 1841 novel, Sab, which is arguably the hemisphere's first anti-slavery novel, but as Guatimozin, which was completed in 1846) makes clear, her other writings should also be of interest and value to Americanists. This particular story was Avellaneda's first to be translated into English, though why the work was translated and printed in Mexico City, in the year 1898, is another story altogether.

Put simply, the book retells the decisive moments of the Spanish Conquest, beginning with Cortés's march from Cholula into Tenochtitlán and concluding with the deposition and torture of Cuauhtemoc, the last of the Aztec emperors, two years later. Avellaneda's history is partial and revisionist: In footnotes, she reveals the chronicles and histories she has read (Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Robertson, etc.), and just as often as she cites them she disputes their veracity. Particularly noteworthy is the attention she pays to the female characters the masculinist chronicles either marginalize or omit entirely. While Cortés's lover, Marina ("La Malinche") is the Aztec woman most frequently referred to by later writers, for example Octavio Paz, in Guatimozin she is sidelined, demonstrating the author's clear preference for the wives and daughters who remain loyal to their indigenous spouses. It's perhaps a bit heavy-handed that it in the "Epilogue" Marina reappears just long enough to strangle Guatimozin's virtuous wife, literally ensuring that she will be the only Aztec woman represented by the colonizers' history.

I have a lot more to say about the book, but I'll save it for the dissertation. Guatimozin has been out of print for years, and its English translation is especially hard to come by, but if you're interested either in Avellaneda or the romantic fiction of the mid-nineteenth-century Latin America, you should give it a look. It's clunky but fascinating....more

I wrote a pretty vicious review of this book after I read it a couple of years ago for a class on "Hemispheric American Literature." Looking back, I tI wrote a pretty vicious review of this book after I read it a couple of years ago for a class on "Hemispheric American Literature." Looking back, I think the problem was that I was reading the book without having a strong idea of the context of its publication or for any real purpose outside of simply wanting to enjoy it. To be clear, Jicoténcal is not a masterfully crafted novel. Its characters are static, and much of the action is relayed through lengthy speeches. But the book's goal is not to entertain, but rather to educate, and in the end I think the author, whomever "he" may be, accomplishes "his" aim of helping readers see in the events of the conquest of Mexico the seeds of tyranny that continued to plague the Americas in the era in which the book was written. Many of these lessons remain relevant today. Probably the first historical novel written in the Spanish language, Jicoténcal is an integral if not terribly fun relic of literary history.

Here's my review from the spring of 2012:

The editors of this edition must have their tongues in their cheeks when they subtitle Xicoténcatl "An Anonymous Historical Novel about the Events Leading Up to the Conquest of the Aztec Empire." First, although the book was published anonymously, scholars are pretty certain it was either co- or completely written by the Cuban priest Félix Varela. Second, it is not an "historical," but rather a very baldly "ideological" novel that Varela has written. In this book, Aztecs speak fluent Spanish. They deliver stirring speeches like characters in a Sophocles play, with plump entreaties to Honor and Dignity, and they carry on romantic and political intrigues just like characters in any romantic novel of manners. If there is, in fact, any history in Xicoténcatl, it's the history of the century in which it was published. The author exhumes long-dead Aztec heroes to claim their inheritance. Why should mid-century Latin Americans join together to overthrow the Spanish colonies? Because they must avenge the noble Xicoténcatl! A tedious novel, important mostly for the light its history sheds upon what Trouillot calls the "production of knowledge" in the nineteenth century....more

Balboa's "Espejo de paciencia" ("Mirror of Patience") is kind of an obnoxious Cuban enigma. The poem transforms the 1604(?) kidnap of the Cuban bishopBalboa's "Espejo de paciencia" ("Mirror of Patience") is kind of an obnoxious Cuban enigma. The poem transforms the 1604(?) kidnap of the Cuban bishop by an ambitious French pirate into an epic tale of adventure, patriotism and, yes, patience. While some of Balboa's most commented-upon lines feature nymphs and other mythological creatures from the European tradition, the poem is notable as a document of "New World" flora, economic and political relations, and cultural hybridity. Composed in 1608(?), and rediscovered by the writers associated with the Del Monte circle in the late 1830s, the poem is more famous as the "first" and "foundational" piece of Cuban literature. Of course, as lots of people point out, Balboa's grandiose, untethered poetry may easily be warped by any critic's priorities, and I suppose that's part of what makes "Espejo de paciencia" so timeless: It's a mirror that reflects its own era just as easily as it can reflect any other. Recommended for specialists in Cuban literature, the New World baroque, or literary representations of Caribbean piracy....more

If I had to describe Kaplan's argument in 160 characters or less, I might say this: James, Dreiser & Wharton freaked by Gilded Age, preserve theirIf I had to describe Kaplan's argument in 160 characters or less, I might say this: James, Dreiser & Wharton freaked by Gilded Age, preserve their privilege through plots putting immigrants & socialists back in their place. The author is important and engaging (for an academic), and if her central claims seem somewhat obvious to us now, it's just a sign of the undeniable influence the book has had on three decades of scholarship. Recommended for people interested in American literary realism, but if you're interested in American literary realism you knew that already....more

The Bostonians is the second James novel I read this fall/winter. Ultimately, I think it's a better read than The Princess Cassamassima -- more believThe Bostonians is the second James novel I read this fall/winter. Ultimately, I think it's a better read than The Princess Cassamassima -- more believable relations between characters, a sharper satiric focus -- but the two make a fascinating combination. I say this not only because they were written one right after the other but because they both profile James at his least socially withdrawn: They're commercial ventures, both serialized in various magazines, and although their politics may be unclear, they are clearly political. James had not yet given the public he thought hated him the famous middle finger.

I need more time and space to figure out my "scholarly" take on the book. I read it because it's a major player in John Morán González's The Troubled Union, a book about literary representations of manifest destiny in the years after Reconstruction, and so I'll confess my attention was guided toward James's depictions of the United States' hard-to-reconcile geographical/philosophical currents: Olive, the women's rights activist from Massachusetts and Basil, the plantation-born lawyer from Mississippi, may be cousins, but they couldn't like each other less, and their energies to direct the future of the lovely, young, talented Verena clearly allegorize the struggle in post-Reconstruction America to determine the country's future. Which is the United States' strongest legacy? That of the northeast's reformism? Or that of the south's chivalry? Verena makes a clear decision in the book's last chapter -- don't worry, I won't give it away -- but the fact that the book's a satire makes it harder for us to interpret her decision. Did she choose wisely? Or does the allegiance she professes doom the union's future?

On a pettier note, I will confess that although the book's characters eventually drew me in, I found the first hundred and fifty pages (or so) a real bore. Olive invites Basil over, the two attend a lecture by a prominent suffragette that is co-opted by the brilliance of precocious Verena, and both Olive and Basil reflect upon how badly they need Verena for themselves. That's it -- for an interminable stretch. Later, I was glad I had bothered with the long introspective passages because they foreshadowed and enriched my understanding of the book's ultimate showdown, but... I can see why published serially the book would annoy/bore/antagonize readers who probably began to wonder for just how many words James could stretch the events of one night's encounter between estranged cousins....more

And now -- my annual relaxing dip into The Borrowers series. Rereading the books now, as an adult living with an infant to whom I may someday read theAnd now -- my annual relaxing dip into The Borrowers series. Rereading the books now, as an adult living with an infant to whom I may someday read them, I do understand why they're no longer popular with youthful folk. For one, compared to your best-selling teenage fantasy series about wizards, vampire lovers, and the zombie apocalypse, they're rather boring. I mean, the book is essentially a comedy of the manners of the pint-sized bourgeoisie. For another, the characters are so fussy. Fortunately, in this volume Norton allows the mother character, Homily, to loosen up a bit and even tramp around for awhile in her petticoat. This is probably the least notable installment so far -- which explains why I hardly remember it -- but I do confess the climactic stand-off between the Borrowers and Mild Eye, the Gypsy, really had me turning the pages. Why the antagonist needs to be so strongly racialized, well, I'm in a charitable mood tonight, so I'll leave that issue be....more

Sister Carrie is what you might call a despised American classic. On one hand, it's called a "classic" by publishers and scholars, and it's included iSister Carrie is what you might call a despised American classic. On one hand, it's called a "classic" by publishers and scholars, and it's included in the most recent list of the "1001 Books to Read Before You Die." But on the other hand, even these people who ostensibly laud the book describe it as melodramatic, overwrought, awkward, perhaps even badly written. Curiously, although I didn't expect to, I enjoyed the book a lot, and I think one of the keys to appreciating the book is not demanding too much from its titular character. Carrie isn't so much a sympathetic character or protagonist as she is an allegory either for greed and appetite, or the American Dream -- or perhaps both. After all, like a vampire, she sucks life and men-folk dry, and the blood and money and dinners in finely furnished restaurants stoke her desires for more, more, more. (On the subject of "more," yes, I would happily read more Dreiser.)...more

Beloved is a tale about haunting. Earlier American writers like Emerson and Cuba's Alejo Carpentier may have said part of what distinguishes the "new"Beloved is a tale about haunting. Earlier American writers like Emerson and Cuba's Alejo Carpentier may have said part of what distinguishes the "new" world from the "old" is its relative lack of history, its absence of ghosts. Toni Morrison corrects that ludicrous claim, proving through this story about an escaped slave woman's most desperate loving act (and its consequences) that history, memories, and ghosts haunt all around us. While the book was instantly hailed an American classic and its international popularity certainly helped Morrison win the Nobel soon afterward, I confess it's not my favorite of her books. That distinction belongs to Song of Solomon....more

Domingo Del Monte is a foundational but difficult figure in Cuban literary history. On the one hand, like Emerson or Howells or even Andy Warhol, he'sDomingo Del Monte is a foundational but difficult figure in Cuban literary history. On the one hand, like Emerson or Howells or even Andy Warhol, he's the gas giant around which an entire constellation gathered. Without him, Juan Francisco Manzano would not have written his Autobiografía, and Anselmo Suárez y Romero, Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel, and even Cirilo Villaverde likely would not have written the progressive anti-slavery texts we cherish today. But on the other hand, unlike the United States writers I mentioned above, Del Monte was not himself a prolific writer, and as far as we know, although he inspired dozens of works of fiction and drama, he himself did not contribute one single text to either genre. What he did write is a scattered body of essays and letters, and in this volume the indomitable Salvador Bueno assembles a few of the former (prefaced by a reprint of the Del Monte chapter from his excellent 1979 book, La crítica literaria cubana del Siglo XIX). The book includes some fine fragments of analysis, for example the overview of 1830s Hispanophilia in the United States, but it also draws attention to the unfortunate truth that we simply do not have enough of the enigmatic Cuban's critical writings to catalogue his "greatest hits." Instead, the essays collected here shed thin rays of light upon the brighter literary and cultural vision Del Monte imparted in his tertulias to his many disciples....more

A novel about the impossible love of two Cuban slaves, Anselmo Suárez y Romero's Francisco is one of the crowning accomplishments of Domingo Del MonteA novel about the impossible love of two Cuban slaves, Anselmo Suárez y Romero's Francisco is one of the crowning accomplishments of Domingo Del Monte's tertulia and early Caribbean narrative. It also exemplifies the generic mixture of nineteenth-century Latin American literature -- romantic in its depiction of the love and inner turmoil of its protagonists, exceedingly realistic in its portrayal of plantation torture. I'm pretty comfortable reading most fiction in the original Spanish, but I admit I relied pretty heavily on this edition's footnotes to describe the various methods of torture inflicted upon Francisco at the hand of the mistress's sadistic son Ricardo. Recommended, but it's only available in Spanish....more

In the United States we are fortunate to have several slave narratives recorded for posterity. These do not compensate for the many more voices silencIn the United States we are fortunate to have several slave narratives recorded for posterity. These do not compensate for the many more voices silenced by slavery and its afterlife, of course, but they do reveal our wealth relative to Cuba -- where there is, as far as we know, only Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía. While the narrative is, as another reviewer mentions, somewhat truncated, it is nonetheless a gripping account of one man's lived pleasures and horrors, and it's also an eye-opening reminder of the complicated family relationships that remain slavery's legacy in the Americas. Ivan Schulman, who introduces the text, writes that there is some debate over the conditions that led Manzano to record his narrative. Whether or not he was coerced by his literary benefactor, Domingo Delmonte, there are undeniable parallels between Manzano's witness account of slavery and the various fictional accounts that were authored around the same time by Félix Tanco Bosmeniel and Anselmo Suárez y Romero. However you approach the debate, Manzano's narrative is a Cuban essential classic....more

Holland's new book is an undeniably valuable piece of scholarship, and I think it will accomplish its aim to inspire new projects in race and sexualitHolland's new book is an undeniably valuable piece of scholarship, and I think it will accomplish its aim to inspire new projects in race and sexuality. However, it is also one of the least coherent, complete, or readable books I know. It is bookended by two strong pieces of analysis -- the introduction grounds itself in an anecdote about a racist encounter the author had in a Safeway parking lot, and the conclusion entwines the Jefferson/Hemings relationship and Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom! in conversation about the cultural significance of interracial "touch" -- but the chapters in between read like the annotated bibliography for the argument Holland planned to write (but didn't)....more

Sick and slick story about incestuous relations between generations of slaves/slave-holders in early nineteenth-century Cuba. Tanco may well have beenSick and slick story about incestuous relations between generations of slaves/slave-holders in early nineteenth-century Cuba. Tanco may well have been the furthest left of the abolitionist writers orbiting Domingo Delmonte, and his cynical portrayal of the moral and economic bankruptcy of the Caribbean sugar plantation holds up well even by this twenty-first reader's standards (despite the "tragic mulatta(s?)"). There's some debate about whether "Petrona and Rosalía" is a novel, a novella, a short story, or perhaps something different altogether, but whatever the case, it's a forgotten essential of nineteenth-century writing. Highly recommended....more

In 1844, which in Cuba is remembered as the "Year of the Lash," the Spanish Captain-General of Cuba authorized the imprisonment and torture of thousanIn 1844, which in Cuba is remembered as the "Year of the Lash," the Spanish Captain-General of Cuba authorized the imprisonment and torture of thousands of slaves suspected of organizing a large-scale rebellion and a handful of white liberal intellectuals believed to have inspired them. As time has gone on historians have begun to wonder: Was there in fact a conspiracy? Or was the "conspiracy" a lie invented by the Spanish Empire's Caribbean representatives in order to simultaneously subjugate two boisterous subgroups? Paquette's book, which remains the gold star against which all other accounts of the Escalera Conspiracy must be judged, is a wealth of archival history. Yes, it's dry. But yes, it's fascinating....more

I finished reading El laberinto de la soledad almost two weeks ago but left the book on my "currently reading" list while I contemplated what I wouldI finished reading El laberinto de la soledad almost two weeks ago but left the book on my "currently reading" list while I contemplated what I would include in this review. My theory was, if I left my brain alone to churn, it would eventually settle upon some clever-ish thought or two that would wrap Paz's masterpiece up in just a couple of paragraphs. Like a labyrinth, it confounds me.

So I'll settle for sharing the first three thoughts that come to mind:

1. I didn't find terribly useful the parts of the book that everybody talks about (the chapters on the pachuco, Mexican masks and fiestas, and La Chingada), but really loved the chapters nobody talks about (the history of Mexico since before colonization). I'm not sure I buy Paz's characterization of Conquest as a form of mass Aztec suicide, but it's certainly food for thought (and fodder for footnotes).

2. In his statements about La Malinche, Paz isn't as baldly sexist as I expected. I was almost disappointed in this, because mostly what I hear about him is that he's as misogynist and homophobic as Mexican intellectuals come, and while those elements are present in Laberinto, they were usually subordinated points and didn't ire me duly. I suppose it's the unobvious prejudices that're more powerful, anyway.

3. I'm glad I bothered with the "dialectics of solitude" appendix, which transform the novel's central metaphor from a bound reflection on Mexican culture into something applicable across all colonized cultures. I appreciated that, Paz. It was the baseball card at the bottom of the box of Cracker Jacks. No idea when I'll want it, but I sure was excited to discover it.

Synthesis: If you're interested in American literature or colonialism, there's no escaping this book. Fortunately, it's engaging and probably much more useful than you're expecting it will be......more

There is plenty to critique in this book, and I think the urge to critique is heightened by the author's ubiquity.

For one, Fanon is deeply misogynistThere is plenty to critique in this book, and I think the urge to critique is heightened by the author's ubiquity.

For one, Fanon is deeply misogynist and homophobic. He writes that it is in refusing to acknowledge the black man that the white man strips him of his subjectivity, and yet he writes nary a word about the black woman. The greatest irony of the book is that the chapter entitled "The Woman of Color and the White Man" is really a chapter about how black men perceive black women, and its central point is this: Black women bear the children of white men because they believe that by whitening their race they shall earn prestige, and in doing so black women abandon the role they should be playing assuring black men of their virility. (No wonder later writers like bell hooks would lash out against Fanon.) His remarks on white women and homosexual men are equally subjugating: They both want black men to rape them.

For another, Fanon is a trained psychiatrist, and as chapter titles like "The Black Man and Psychopathology" indicate, he is invested in using the psychoanalysic practices of people like the Freuds, Jung, and Lacan to analyze the relation between colonizing and colonized peoples. Perhaps it's just that psychoanalysis has run its course in cultural theory -- or perhaps that it's just become so banal, which amounts to roughly the same thing -- but I found the long passages on dream interpretations rather dull and not terribly persuasive. Appiah concedes this point in his introduction to the Grove edition.

These criticisms aside, however, what I think remains most valuable in Black Skin, White Masks is the fact that at heart it's a small, personal book -- a meditation on the author's own experiences as a black male intellectual -- that can't quite live up to the reputation it has earned as the record of an entire generation. Despite the "vintage" gender politics and analytic practices, Fanon's book conveys a palpable sense of subjective hurt, and also a surprisingly conciliatory desire to forge new, mutually beneficial relationships with white people. Of course, the second best reason to read the book remains its influence; after all, it's hard to read Glissant, Silverman, Hartman, or many others, without first making a pit-stop here. Recommended for literary and cultural historians....more

In La palma del cacique (The Chieftain's Palm), Alejandro Tapia y Rivera depicts in mythological romance the colonial encounter between the Spanish anIn La palma del cacique (The Chieftain's Palm), Alejandro Tapia y Rivera depicts in mythological romance the colonial encounter between the Spanish and the indigenous tribes of Puerto Rico. In the tradition of Jicoténcal, the novella reconstructs a "native" past wherein Indians look and act rather a lot like Greek and Roman heroes, a rhetorical maneuver that at once glorifies the island's earlier inhabitants and emphasizes their pastness, though unlike the author of Jicoténcal, Tapia y Rivera does express an ethnographer's interest in the motivations behind such "barbaric" indigenous customs as the burying of (living) wives with deceased husbands. I don't recommend reading the story for its adventure -- its two central characters, the warrior Guarionex and the lovely, traitorous Loarina, are stock features of romantic renditions of the Conquest -- but I do think it a worthy counterpoint to more frequently read indigenista works like Jicoténcal and Iracema, and certainly a necessary stopping point for anybody interested in the (failed?) movement toward Puerto Rican cultural independence....more

Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism is a thin book that's sat unopened on my bookshelf for far too long. As a student of the Spanish-speaking CaribbeanCésaire's Discourse on Colonialism is a thin book that's sat unopened on my bookshelf for far too long. As a student of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, I hear now and again about Césaire in tangential ways, and when I ran across this title for fifty cents in a used bookstore, I figured what the heck. Flash forward a year and a few months, I'm reading Fanon and Glissant for class and studying for a PhD exam, and it's finally time to take the plunge. It was overdue.

Writing in 1950, just after the Second World War, Césaire counters the "shock" that Mussolini's and Hitler's fascism (not to mention the Holocaust) had caused the European world by pointing out that in fact these events had been anticipated by the extermination of indigenous peoples in the Americas and the enslavement of millions more from Africa. The scandal, he writes, is that Hitler would have the audacity to subject white people to the same brutality. The point here is not that white people got what they deserved, but rather that colonization and dehumanization are constant features of bourgeois capitalism, and that inescapably colonizers undergo what Césaire calls "the boomerang effect": In order to justify their moral relativism, they depict other people as barbaric animals, but in the actions they take following this rhetorical maneuver, they transform themselves into animals.

The essay is provocative and reads smoothly. The editor, Robin D. G. Kelley, aptly calls it a "prose poem," and this is substantiated in the interview printed afterward, in which Césaire says he finally came into his own as a poet after he denounced poetry. We are roughly introduced to the concept of negritude, which for the author means recovering the shared African past for all the world's black people in order not to feel apologetic about working toward a shared black future, and the philosophical seeds that would sprout in Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks and Glisant's essays are apparent....more

Interestingly, the most engaging of the chronicles of the Spanish conquest of the Americas is this chronicle of failure. In Spanish, the book is oftenInterestingly, the most engaging of the chronicles of the Spanish conquest of the Americas is this chronicle of failure. In Spanish, the book is often known as Naufragios, which means Shipwrecks, and that's exactly what happens throughout, both literally and metaphorically. The story begins in 1527, when the Spaniard Pánfilo de Narváez led an expedition to colonize Florida. After various storms, wrecks, abandonments, kidnappings, and other calamities, only four of the men who had accompanied Narváez's mission remained alive, and it was his treasurer, Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who would immortalize the entire expedition in this account when he returned, at last, to Spain, after ten years a castaway on the American mainland. While it's important not to lose track of the fact that Cabeza de Vaca set out an aspiring conquistador and in this narrative offers up his experiences as surveillance later Spaniards could use to subjugate the lands and Indians he had gotten to know, it's also impossible not to be taken in by the marvels and the adventure....more

Las Casas's account of the Spanish conquest of the American mainlands and islands may be brief, but it certainly is not easy. Upstanding indigenous kiLas Casas's account of the Spanish conquest of the American mainlands and islands may be brief, but it certainly is not easy. Upstanding indigenous kings whose feet are burned until the marrow gushes forth, babies dismembered and fed to dogs, men forced to swim for pearls in waters infested with various breeds of vicious sharks -- I can't think of many books that detail happenings so gruesome, and throughout I felt sick to my stomach knowing that as a middle-class descendent of Europeans living in central Texas I yet live off the spoils of the avarice, deception, and violence the author decried five centuries ago. It is true, as others have pointed out, that las Casas exaggerates his numbers, and it is also true that he was able to write his exposé because he himself had traveled to the Americas in order to colonize bodies and souls (for Christ, if not for gold). That said, however, his is a welcome voice of protest and humanity amongst the glorying chronicles of Cortés and Díaz del Castillo....more

Saidiya Hartman, a black American and scholar, travels to Ghana in order to -- what, exactly? Search for signs of her family's history before the MiddSaidiya Hartman, a black American and scholar, travels to Ghana in order to -- what, exactly? Search for signs of her family's history before the Middle Passage? Reunite with members of the ancestral family from which her own line has been estranged for four-hundred years? Confront the physical spaces of slavery (the markets, the dungeons, etc.) in order to finally make peace with the shadows they have cast over her life?

Lose Your Mother is as much a "Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route" as it is a journey into one women's hard-to-name desire to scour northern Africa for the origin story she knows she will never find. It is an eccentric and somewhat schizophrenic piece of scholarship insofar as it both narrates and theorizes, and prints family portraits alongside archived paintings and photographs snapped along the voyage. The hybridity makes for a deeply personal and engaging read, however; I've read lots of books that expose the silences of archives, but none that so poignantly illustrate the tolls still incurred by those silences centuries later....more

So, this book is exactly what its subtitle says it is: A [Very] Brief History with [Excerpts from Lots of Dense Historical] Documents. I read the bookSo, this book is exactly what its subtitle says it is: A [Very] Brief History with [Excerpts from Lots of Dense Historical] Documents. I read the book for a graduate seminar on the concept of "black subjectivity," but as I worked my way through sixty pages of Supreme Court opinions, newspaper editorials, Lincoln-Douglas debates, etc., I decided that I wish I had known about the book fifteen years ago, when I was studying for the AP US History Exam. I sometimes felt like Finkelman's introductions summarized the primary documents so thoroughly the overall book felt redundant, but still, it's nice to have all these materials in just one place....more

Bell hooks's primary opponent in this book is the white feminist movement -- what's typically called the "second wave" -- of the 1960s and 70s. Her poBell hooks's primary opponent in this book is the white feminist movement -- what's typically called the "second wave" -- of the 1960s and 70s. Her point is that the white women involved in the movement are racist and sexist and have routinely alienated and antagonized the black women who should be standing at their sides, but in order to develop that point, she retraces the history of black women in the United States since slavery. The book was groundbreaking upon its publication in 1981, and it launched the career of one of the most prolific and influential American cultural critics of the last several decades. As a piece of scholarship, it certainly has limitations: It makes too many broad historical generalizations, it doesn't grapple with the fact that the United States is made up of people who are neither white nor black, it's somewhat heteronormative, and many sources are not cited. However, as a piece of rhetoric, it's well-written, insightful, and certainly effective. Three stars....more

I found both this book's premise and presentation fascinating. The author, Melton McLaurin, writes in his introduction that too often "history" is noI found both this book's premise and presentation fascinating. The author, Melton McLaurin, writes in his introduction that too often "history" is no more than the cobbled stories of men at the head of their society; while Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, etc., certainly merit study, shifting our focus toward less exceptional figures reveals a more accurate and relatable history. In the chapters that follow, he pieces together what may have been the life and story of the Missouri slave Celia, tried in 1855 for the murder of her master, Robert Newsom.

What would it have been like to live in the United States in the decades just before the Civil War? How could I have reconciled myself to the institution of slavery? This rendition of Celia's crime and trial doesn't exhaustively answer either of these questions, but I think it is enough that it raises them.

For McLaurin, living in a time and place where slavery is legally and socially acceptable means confronting moral conundrums on a daily basis. Your widowed father, who provides food and shelter for you and your three children, brings home a fourteen-year-old black child one afternoon, and although he says he has hired her as a cook, you know she rarely leaves his bedroom. You disapprove, but what action do you take? What different actions are available to you if you are a man or if you are a woman? What do you do a few months later, when the girl is noticeably pregnant? What do you do when she pleads with you to intervene on her behalf? Celia is certainly the central character in the book, but McLaurin wisely notes that her story illuminates an entire society in that it forces many people in many different parts of that society to face moral quandaries -- and to reveal their mettle in the hard decisions they must make.

Of course, because Celia lived so long ago and was a slave, her life is not well documented. Unlike Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth, Celia does not share her story in her own words. Rather, McLaurin pieces together the census and legal details the archive retains and speculates about the rest, even drawing into the conversation comparatively recent scholarship about, say, the psychic consequences of rape. The book's hybrid nature -- it's not quite a history, and it's not quite a novel -- apparently has divided Goodreads reviewers, many of whom find it either too scholarly or too unsubstantiated to take seriously. Personally, I appreciate the text's ambiguity. McLaurin writes in the tradition of Theodore Dresier (An American Tragedy) and Truman Capote (In Cold Blood): It is the writer's job to tell our society's stories, and telling stories has to do with more than slapping footnotes on every paragraph....more

While I don't think The Cliff-Dwellers, arguably the first novel about metropolitan Chicago, is heartless, I do think it's fair to call it cold.

HenryWhile I don't think The Cliff-Dwellers, arguably the first novel about metropolitan Chicago, is heartless, I do think it's fair to call it cold.

Henry Blake Fuller tells the story of a promising young Bostonian named George Ogden who moves "out west" to make his fame and fortune in the new frontier city. There, he finds work in the city's newest skyscraper, the Clifton, where his actions and desires quickly intermix with those of the men and women who also work in the building's eighteen floors. The ethnic and class homogeneity of the Clifton -- everyone there is white and either solidly middle-class or wealthy -- is clearly not emblematic of the real social breakdown in Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century, but even so, for Fuller the building is a miniature of the whole "Windy City." The pettiness of Brainard, the underhanded trickery of McDowell, the ultimate despair of Ogden -- we are meant to understand that these are characteristics not contained within the Clifton's walls.

Clearly, Fuller is an artist. His deceptively simply sentences bring together episodes in the text in suggestive ways. And, as just about everyone who reads the book notes, the introduction, which compares the men and women who spend their days and nights in urban skyscrapers to the cliff-dwelling indigenous Americans who once inhabited the southwestern United States (and had been profiled at the 1893 Colombian Exhibition), is clever. But even these formal successes, which remind readers they're studying rather than getting to know the novel's characters, ultimately make the book even less satisfying than its caustic tone, selfish characters, and incredibly dire conclusion would have done on their own. The wind blows crisp in Chicago, from the lake as well as the politicians, and it'll cut you from these pages directly....more

Mark Twain wrote this novel when he was pretty old, pretty crabby, and living in Europe to avoid creditors and the other people who made him feel oldMark Twain wrote this novel when he was pretty old, pretty crabby, and living in Europe to avoid creditors and the other people who made him feel old and crabby. Really, it's a simple story: A light-skinned slave woman swaps her baby with her master's baby, hoping to ensure the former a happier life without the risk of being "sold down the river," and the rest of the book builds suspense for the "big moment" when true identities are revealed.

I've read a few reviews that allege that Pudd'nhead Wilson is a book against slavery, but this isn't quite accurate, as the Civil War had made slavery effectively illegal a quarter century before it was published. Instead, Twain writes a book to counter "scientific" claims made in the late nineteenth century in support of (white) racial superiority. Slavery is over, he argues, but people who believe nature (one's heritage) has a larger impact than nurture (the social conditions into which one is born) are essentially slave-holders in their modern reincarnations. On one hand, I'd like to fault Twain for writing a book ostensibly about being black in the United States without including a single character whose skin is noticeably dark. But on the other hand, it's a treat how he points out real and artificial differences between white skins. There is, after all, less difference in color between "white" master and "black" slave than there is between the Italian twins who move into town, who are able to be distinguished only because one is slightly "darker" than the other.

Twain stages his conclusion in a courtroom, where poor Pudd'nhead Wilson finally has the chance to practice the law he studied oh-so-many years ago. For those of us who're accustomed to (and extremely tired of) the courtroom formula that plays out every week in Law and Order and a dozen other TV series, I think this is a bit of a let-down after what is otherwise an imaginative and caustic romp. However, I can't deny that that "big moment," when it finally happens, is written masterfully. Four stars....more

Now, a sigh of relief. I have survived my first Henry James novel. I read it cover to cover, I only spent five days doing it, and honestly it wasn't bNow, a sigh of relief. I have survived my first Henry James novel. I read it cover to cover, I only spent five days doing it, and honestly it wasn't bad. It so "wasn't bad" that I'll even confess I enjoyed it.

Generally, critics regard The Princess Casamassima as among James's weaker efforts. However, that's clearly a relative remark and one that I suppose indicates more than anything the depth and wealth of his catalogue. Had the book been written by a less prolific author, say Hamlin Garland or Sarah Orne Jewett, it would shine less like an oddly smooth pebble and more like the gem it really is.

As other reviewers have stated, the novel isn't driven by plot as much as character. In terms of movement and what literature teachers call "rising actions," there isn't much to report: Hyacinth Robinson, the book's protagonist, is the child of a French prostitute who is jailed shortly after his birth for murdering his aristocratic English fathor. He is raised by a spinster seamstress, Miss Pynsent, and her fiddle-playing neighbor, Mr. Vetch. Miss Pynsent takes pride in Hyacinth's aristocratic blood, and so though he grows up in one of London's slummier neighborhoods, he cultivates a sense of artistic taste and self-appreciation that drives an ever-widening wedge between his desires and aspirations and his living conditions and means. In his early twenties, desperate for the chance to avenge his social disenfranchisement and distinguish himself, Hyacinth joins an underground socialist movement. This makes him attractive to the Princess, whose newest hobby is exploring the adventurous London slums, and as the relationship between the two advances, the question arises: Will Hyacinth sacrifice his life to the cause that affects him less and less the more time he spends in the company of the Princess?

Ultimately, the book is about the psychology of extremist social movements. As Clinton Oliver points out in the introduction to the Harper Colophon edition, The Princess Casamassima was printed around the same time as the Haymarket riots in Chicago and the outbreak of a number of similar, violent protests on both sides of the Atlantic. As Arab Spring and other recent events attest, the questions James asks remain pertinent a hundred and twenty-five years later: Why do some members of the laboring classes strap bombs to their bodies or commit other acts of terrorism on behalf of organizations who treat them like faceless pawns? Why would other members of the laboring classes, the ones who relish art museums and theatre performances, give their lives to protect the aristocratic privilege that subjugates them? What leads people who are born into privilege to sacrifice the delights of their position and instead dedicate themselves to acts of charity or terrorism?

James asks more questions than he answers, and honestly I think that's what makes the book timeless; it's a novel that explores the mentality behind social movements rather than a participant in any movement itself (as compared to, say, Sinclair's The Jungle). But if James does offer any kind of answer, it has something to do with the alienation that is characteristic of capitalistic, modern, and urban living. For example, Lady Aurora and the Princess Casamassima are strangers in their well-to-do homes; the former is unattractive, the latter is American (and not terribly wealthy) by birth, and they're both women making their way in a masculinist society very much structured against them. They find their refuge, and their ability to be powerful, by contributing their privilege to aid the less fortunate.

Similarly, Hyacinth Robinson, the book's protagonist, is wholly divorced from his fate. In five-hundred pages (that span over twenty years), he makes just one decision regarding the direction his own life will take. The state jails his mother; Miss Pynsent decides whether or not he will see his mother on her death-bed; Mr. Vetch determines that he shall become a book-binder; the Princess allows him to work (or not) or visit (or not) according to her leisure; and so forth. When Hyacinth finally does act, it is, of course, an act of tragedy and desperation.

Lastly, a word about Hyacinth's name. Maybe it's too obvious to point out, or maybe I'm just conditioned to think only puppies, dolls, or cartoon characters should be named after flowers, but Hyacinth has got to be among the oddest and least "strenuous" of names given to the heroes of tragic nineteenth-century novels. Moreover, the book in which he is protagonist does not even carry his own name. It is called The Princess Casamassima, after a character who enters and exits the story. By naming his hero Hyacinth, by placing him in a book that carries not his name but that of a wayward Italian princess, James does more than remind us of Hyacinth's alienation. Tragedies (Oedipus Rex, for example, or King Lear), like histories, pretend that universals about human experience may be gleaned by chronicling only humanity's most titled and wealthy. Because he is poor, Hyacinth is doomed not to be remembered by history. Because she is royalty, The Princess Casamassima is bound to be remembered. But the discrepancy between title and protagonist is ironic: At the threshold of the twentieth century, as the aristocracy is dismantled on both sides of the Atlantic, James reminds us that history must account for the ordinary blokes, too....more

What is most ambitious (and ultimately best) about this book, Michael Robertson's first, is that it is at once a study of a single author and a revisiWhat is most ambitious (and ultimately best) about this book, Michael Robertson's first, is that it is at once a study of a single author and a revision of an entire century of United States literature. Stephen Crane is often read as a novelist first and journalist second, that is, as an aspiring writer who used newspapers as stepping stones toward novels. However, as Robertson writes, the chronology of Crane's career doesn't bear this out. Even after The Red Badge of Courage shot him to fame in 1895, he continued to seek out reportorial work, and in many cases the sketches and feature columns that readers have assumed are the "rough drafts" for works like Maggie, Red Badge, or "The Open Boat" were, in fact, written and published after their fictional counterparts. The book's middle chapters delve into Crane's substantial body of urban sketches, travel reports, and war dispatches, and throughout Robertson pushes our assumptions about how nineteenth-century audiences read newspapers and how, in fact, writers and readers negotiate that fine line between fact and fiction. The first chapter utilizes the anti-journalistic remarks of Howells and Henry James to contextualize Crane's nonfiction, and in the final chapter the author profiles two later writers, Dreiser and Hemingway, who modeled their careers on Crane's precedent. I disagree with a few of the fine points in Robertson's interpretations, particularly concerning Crane's Mexico sketches, but nonetheless I would enthusiastically recommend the book to anybody interested in Crane or the foundations upon which our great twentieth-century writers stand....more

The American 1890s does for Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Kate Chopin, and others who wrote and published in the last few years of the nineteenth centuThe American 1890s does for Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Kate Chopin, and others who wrote and published in the last few years of the nineteenth century what Mathiessen's American Renaissance had done for Emerson, Melville, and the other writers of the 1840s and 50s. It salvages a few names from the wreckage of the decade and installs them in a canon. When the book was published, in 1966, it could've been a course. Today, it's still of use but shows its wear.

Usually, when we say "lost generation" we refer to the men and women who didn't return from World War I. For Larzer Ziff, who, by the way, remains an insightful and remarkably prolific scholar of American literature fifty years later, the 1890s is also a lost generation -- "lost" in the sense that so few of its most promising new writers made it to the new century. Crane, Norris, and Harold Frederick died young. Hamlin Garland, Richard Harding Davis, and Mary Wilkins Freeman never realized the potential their earlier literary works had promised. Infuriated by The Awakening's miserable reception, Chopin simply withdrew. A few of these names would inspire later writers like Dreiser and Hemingway; however, none of them survived as mentors. I think Ziff stretches biography in order to help this large cast of characters seem uniformly "lost" after the turn of the century; he writes, for example, that Garland sold out after Main-Travelled Roads but ignores that this "hack" writer also won a Pulitzer in 1922. Also, it's unclear whether the disappearances of these men and women increased or decreased their attraction to successors. Had Crane lived, wouldn't his augustness have overshadowed the youthful appeal of The Red Badge of Courage?

One of the book's strengths is that its panorama masterfully intermingles dozens of writers, publishers, and politicians, and just as many historical events, in a book that's less than 400 pages and not hard at all to follow. I particularly appreciated Ziff's use of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (the "Colombian Exhibition") as a framing device.

However, accounts of history inevitably say more about the period in which they were written than the period they claim to illuminate, and like I said, this one shows its age. Knowing a bit about the era already, at least as it is taught half a century later, I had in mind the roster I expected Ziff would follow, and ultimately I wished his lost generation had been both smaller and larger. On one hand, the most significant body of literature that emerged in the 1890s is tied to realism and journalism, and so I'm not sure much would have been lost had the chapters on, say, John Jay Chapman or Edwin Arlington Robinson been excised. They're tacked onto the end of the book, anyway, and felt (to me) rather like appendices. On the other hand, I bet even Ziff would agree today that no story of the "American 1890s" is complete without a broader study of non white males. Where, for example, are José Martí, Paul Laurence Dubar, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Charles Chesnutt? One of the disconnected later chapters surveys the wealth of texts written by women like Freeman, Chopin, and Sarah Orne Jewett, but it misses one of the field's most prominent names. "Charlotte Stetso Perkins" is cited once, for her nonfiction work Women and Economics, but regarding "The Yellow Wallpaper" the critic is conspicuously silent.

I've gone on for a bit about what I consider the book's weaknesses, but like I said these are weaknesses identified only in retrospect and in contrast to what younger scholars like Amy Kaplan, Phil Barrish, etc., have put forward as the present and ephemeral "final word." This is to say that The American 1890s remains a highly engaging literary history -- I'd almost call it a group biography -- that I'd recommend to anybody interested either in the era in general or any of the profiled authors in particular. It's also an enlightening time capsule in its own way, a glimmer of literary scholarship yet innocent of the timely interventions of theorists of gender and race. ...more